Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill

Debate between Mark Garnier and Chris Leslie

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 8th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

That is why I suspect that the other place will look at the truncated scrutiny. I tried to get this out of the Minister earlier—not the Minister before us, but the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. It was not a Cabinet Minister who came to the Chamber to introduce the Bill, by the way, but I am told that a reshuffle might be going on, so perhaps the Chief Secretary or even the Chancellor are in negotiations. The junior Minister acquitted himself reasonably well at the outset—as well as he possibly could, given the line that was scripted for him to take—but I think that a Cabinet Minister should have presented a Bill of such scale and importance. It deserves proper scrutiny in this place, with the right number of Committee sittings, because otherwise the other place will have to do that job for us.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mark Garnier)]

I am happy to confirm that the Bill will have eight Committee sittings in the House of Commons.

[Mr Leslie]

I can only hope—fingers crossed—that I am selected for the Committee. I know that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench will be keen to have me on it. I try my best to be as constructive as possible at all times, so I hold out great hope for that.

Part 1 of the Bill is very wide-ranging. My hon. Friends have made speeches about trade remedies in respect of anti-dumping and subsidy provisions. Perhaps the Minister will use his winding-up speech to cast a little more light on what the UK’s policy will be on competitive trade and, in particular, on subsidy issues. I know that Government Members have an interest in many aspects of trade with places such as China and other non-market economies. The question about subsidies is important, so I would like to hear a little more from the Government about what their policy stance will be. Will we cut and paste the existing EU approach or not?

A number of big decisions have to be made. When our constituents find out that we will have the power to raise or lower a particular duty, the widget manufacturers or whatever in our constituencies who might be prone to it, or whose competitors might be prone to it, will take great interest in contacting Members of Parliament to say, “Will you push the Government to raise this duty?” or, “Will you push Ministers to lower that duty?” This has the potential to fill our inboxes for decades to come.

Members of the European Parliament—we have sort of outsourced much of this policy to the EU for 40 years—have a number of scrutiny powers in respect of customs and excise and trade agreements that we will not have when those matters are brought to the House of Commons. I worry very much about trade agreements. Members of the European Parliament have the right to comment on them and even to suggest amendments to them. Of course, they then give final consent to trade agreements, but that is not part of the current Administration’s package under the customs and trade Bills.